OPINION: The price tag of birthright

It’s February and promotion and recruiting for Taglit-Birthright trips to Israel is in full swing on campus. “Birthright” trips, which provide Jewish youth between the ages of 18-26 with an all expense-paid trip to the state of Israel, are advertised as “connecting Jewish students to their Jewish journey and identities, to Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people, and, upon return, to their Jewish communities.” The funding for the trip comes from private individuals, the government of Israel and various Jewish organizations worldwide.

Fourth Estate recently published an article entitled “What it means for Jews to go on Birthright.” I have to say, I’m disappointed in the completely uncritical approach the article took in profiling such a heavily politicized trip.

The trip has been marketed at Mason (both online and on posters in the Johnson Center) as a “free” trip of a lifetime. While on the trip, participants will visit significant cultural/religious sites such as the holy sites in Jerusalem, the Dead Sea, Massada and various other activities such as spending a night on a Kibbutz, with a Bedouin community, and a night in Tel Aviv.

Birthright is one of the greatest propaganda trips in existence. The itinerary unassuming North American participants will experience there is equal parts fun, equal parts religious and equal parts nationalist, and when you combine that with the fact that it’s all paid for, it’s little surprise that participants return to the U.S. believing in the dominant narrative surrounding Israel: that it’s a “beacon” of democracy, hope, light and whatever else it’s been described as in American discourse surrounding a state built on ethnic cleansing, settler-colonialism and, frankly, genocide.

I’m not going to address the obvious problem with conflating North American Jews with a nation-state only in existence since 1948 since it’s already been donebymanyAmericanJews. But I’d like to address what Birthright participants won’t see in their time in Israel.

Participants will likely visit the beautiful old city of Jerusalem, which is home to religious and cultural sites sacred to all three major Abrahamic faiths. They’ll visit the Western Wall, holy site to Jews around the world. They’ll likely walk through the Armenian Quarter, have falafel under an ancient arch, and hear church bells and the adhan in tandem.

What they won’t see is Israel’s desecration of the Noble Sanctuary this past summer, when the Aqsa Mosque, third most holy site to Muslims, was stormed by soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces who let loose tear gas canisters and what sound like small explosives. On my trip to the region this summer on Mason’s Israel-Palestine summer internship program, access to the mosque for Friday prayers was restricted only to women and men over 50, week after week during the holiest month on the Islamic calendar, Ramadan.

Participants may visit the breathtaking Church of Holy Sepulchre and be told that Israel is the only safe place in the Middle East for Christians, but they won’t be told of the vandalism of churches across the country with graffiti such as “Jesus was the son of a whore” and “we will crucify you” in Hebrew. This extreme religious nationalism is inspired by the politicians of the same government that funds Birthright trips. They won’t be told that the indigenous Palestinian Christians of the region deeply suffer the effects of military occupation and settler-colonialism and were even prevented from seeing Pope Francis on his visit to Jerusalem.

It should go against decent human sensibilities to visit a region and ignore its politics, the bloodshed one’s tax dollars have been responsible for and the ways in which the human suffering continues to this day. It is almost impossible to visit Berlin and not be reminded of the evil that extreme German nationalism was once responsible for. When we think of South Africa, beautiful coastlines come to mind, but so does apartheid. The American cities of Montgomery, Birmingham, Little Rock and Selma all mean something to Americans beyond sleepy oak trees and soul food.

Likewise, separating Jerusalem from its politics is a distinctly political act. Engineering and promoting a program which ignores the harsh realities of half of the people living in a region (meaning Palestinians living both within the state of Israel as well as those in the Occupied Territories) and focuses almost entirely on the experiences of the those privileged by law (Israeli Jews both within Israel proper and in the Occupied Territories) is a starkly political act which aims to distort the perceptions of North American visitors to this region. Propaganda is defined as “the deliberate, systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate cognitions, and direct behavior to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the propagandist.” As mentioned earlier, Taglit-Birthright’s mission includes the statement that “the experience of a trip to Israel is a building block of Jewish identity…we can strengthen bonds with the land and people of Israel…” This ingenious program is carefully constructed so as to create the idea of Israel as a warm paradise next to the Mediterranean, with neighbors who hate it solely for what it represents, rather than for what it’s been built on or what it continues to do to this day. Participants leave the country having never visited a refugee camp, or seen the elderly and mothers with children attempt to pass through a dehumanizing checkpoint, or without facing any harassment at the airport (that anyone of dark skin is almost guaranteed to face).

At its core, what Taglit-Birthright’s mission statement says that the purpose of the program is to indoctrinate non-Israeli Jews with the notion that they possess an inherent and exclusive claim to the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. There are, of course, many students on campus also with a “birthright” claim to their ancestral homeland, meaning the homeland that their grandparents were forcibly expelled from, and a homeland to which they are not welcome by law. These students are not welcome on Birthright trips to Israel, and in fact, Palestinian students at Loyola University Chicago were subject to probation after attempting to register for the trip. One does not need to be Palestinian to see this stark and gross injustice.

In a recent article published in Fourth Estate it was written, “Mason Hillel director Ross Diamond says that Hillel’s role on campus is ‘to inspire Jewish students to be engaged in learning about Israel.’ Hillel is not exclusive however, and non-Jewish students are more than welcome to attend their programs.”

Although there is no doubt that Hillel provides a valuable community for Jewish students, as well as organizing valuable events, sometimes in collaboration with other organizations, its professed emphasis on the importance of the state of Israel is alienating and makes it a distinctly political group on campus advocating for a very clear agenda. Hillel’s rigid politics have prompted some students the American Jewish community to establish the Open Hillel movement, which led a conference last October for the purpose of fostering dialogue within the Jewish diaspora community about the politics of Israel.

As a non-Jew and a non-Palestinian, my stake in this issue is that I find it impossible to remain silent while a racist and genocidal state provides free trips to North Americans, while my Palestinian friends – both in the United States and in the Occupied Territories – are barred by law from entering Israel proper. The promotion of Birthright on campus is an almost uncontested facilitation of this injustice, and if nothing else, I hope Mason students find it in themselves to challenge the narrative, for the sake of their Palestinian classmates.

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For those of you just tuning in, the author of this article is on a scholarship from the Islamic Society of North America to promote Islam through media.
It was nice of him to include a definition of propaganda since this is exactly what he is paid to do.

mason dos

Ah makes more sense now

RHENLE

When you can’t argue against the author’s points, argue against the author!

(also that’s a cutie pah-tootie conspiracy theory you got there baby. you come up with that one by yourself or are you on the Jihad Watch mailing list?)

MasonStudent

Nah. I got it from the author’s LinkedIn page. What is Jihad Watch?

I’m happy he was able to earn a scholarship for writing about a topic that interests him. What I don’t like is that the lack of transparency at Fourth Estate.
I would say the same of any author who received money to write about a topic, e.g. if a student was funded by AIPAC to write about Israel.

Arafat

“The Muslim ignorance of history is just jaw dropping.”

Zealots don’t care very much about reality.

Arafat

The Yazidi in Iraq and the Christian Copts in Egypt are not “settlers” and “occupiers;” neither are the Jews in Israel.

They are victims of a common enemy that seems to want a Middle East free of non-Muslims.

Arafat

For a Muslim to face up to the reality of Islam and to admit to oneself that Islam is the problem means to lose one’s identity. Hence the cognitive dissonance Muslims experience when Islam is called into question.
Hence the scrambling for excuses and explanations that can convince the Muslims themselves that Islam is not the problem. And the explanations tend to be colonialism, crusades, Jews, racism, and so forth.

Arafat

“No peace under Israeli occupation”

Ah! So that’s why there’s no peace in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Sudan, Nigeria, and the other 56 Islamic states!

Those Israelis sure do get around!

Arafat

Compromise with Muslim terrorists is impossible because the issue is not really about Jerusalem, oil revenues in Nigeria, Kashmir or Syria.

It’s always about Islam.
The territorial claims are unlimited and uncompromisable because they are backed by Islam. No concession can ever suffice because Islam promises its followers not merely some land in Syria, Israel or India… but the
entire world.

Arafat

While you make nonsensical comments, the Jews are off winning Nobel peace prizes, getting advanced degrees, launching businesses, developing new technologies, and so on.

Arafat

While Israelis laud their scientists, their artists, their doctors and multiple Nobel Prize nominees and recipients, Palestinians have a long and ignominious tradition of extolling the virtues of those who commit
mass murder, slaughter innocents on buses and hijack commercial airliners. Public squares and streets are named after them and their children are taught to emulate them.
The contrast between Israeli and Palestinian society could not be starker. One society celebrates and encourages progress and life while the other has morphed itself into a death cult, steeped in perverted traits that are an anathema to Western civilization.

Arafat

I have a hard time believing that people who willingly let terrorists strap suicide vests to their children care even one bit about “peace, freedom and justice”.

Arafat

Indigenous Palestinians are a false claim, they are Arabs who took Palestine form the Cannanites, so they are imperialists and should be carted off to jail.

Arafat

Muslims don’t have any land. The Middle East region was Judeo-Christian for thousands and hundreds of years before Islam appeared in the 7th century AD. Muslims are squatters on ancient Judeo-Christian land.

Arafat

Israel is a sliver of democracy on an area that’s
otherwise a hellish, theocratic swamp where free will and rational thinking go
to die. In Israel the rule of law is set by institutions with democratically
elected officials, not by religious scholars making decisions in accordance
with holy books.

Arafat

As we come into the United Nations, we passed the flags of all 193 member States. If you take the time to count, you will discover that there are 15 flags with a crescent and 25 flags with a cross. And then there is one flag with a Jewish Star of David. Amidst all the nations of the world there is one state – just one small nation state for the Jewish people.

And for some people, that is one too many.

Arafat

The right of indigenous people to their homeland is not up for debate. Nor is the undeniable *fact* that the Jewish people originated in Israel. We are not disagreeing because there’s nothing to disagree about. You
are simply denying reality because you are against Jews having the same rights as everyone else for a reason I would rather not speculate.

Guest

Birthright is a great program. I is designed to introduce Jews to their homeland, and has nothing to do with the Israeli Palestinian conflict. It is the author, I’m afraid, who has conflated the Palestinian refugees with the fully enfranchised Arab Israeli citizens, whom the young Jewish visiors encounter and befriend.

Jaybird

Birthright is a great program. I is designed to introduce Jews to their homeland, and has nothing to do with the Israeli Palestinian conflict. It is the author, I’m afraid, who has conflated the Palestinian refugees with the fully enfranchised Arab Israeli citizens, whom the young Jewish visitors encounter and befriend.

RHENLE

If you read the israeli press (Haaretz, Jerusalem post are both in the JC library) you’ll regularly find editorials about the “population bomb” Israelis face as a result of higher Arab birth rates. There are also overt statements about the need for more American jews to make Aliyah, how to encourage this with government policy etc.

It’s pretty obvious that birthright serves the dual purpose of propagating American jewish identity with the modern israeli state and encouraging emigration. Both of these are heavily interested and not-so-thinly-veiled motives. It’s all a big PR gig, and a brilliant and successful one too, unfortunately.

But hey, if you want to think people are shelling out millions of dollars to help you become “introduced to your homeland” (how’s that for an oxymoron), by all means don’t look beneath the surface and take it at face value!

funk2626

The Arab birth rate has in fact fallen tremendously over the last decade due to their increased standards of living, and the population bomb is in fact a myth at this point. And with the influx of Post Soviet people into Israel after 1989 Israel doesn’t have a demographic problem any more. And yes, it is important for every Jew, not just American Jews, to know they are always welcome in Israel when the rest of the world treats them with suspicion and contempt. Birthright is a PR thing, yes, but it’s actually quite a blessing. Emigration is handled by another wonderful program called Nefesh B Nefesh.

RHENLE

Are you getting paid 50 cents a piece by AIPAC to post this drivel or is your mind an uncritical piece of machinery that responds to boredom by regurgitating canned pro-Israel arguments that are absolutely irrelevant to the current political situation (“yeah so what we killed 600 gazan children last summer… There’s only ONE flag with a Star of David at the UN”)?

Nobody is calling for the destruction of israel. We’re calling for the construction of a more just, more peaceful, more democratic Israel that doesn’t periodically drop bombs on urban neighbor areas every 2-5 years.